Griffiss Institute’s STEM reaches out to high school students

Tuesday

Jasmin Zvornicanin and Giovanni Rivera aren’t spending their spring break sleeping in like many of their classmates.

Jasmin Zvornicanin and Giovanni Rivera aren’t spending their spring break sleeping in like many of their classmates.

They’re participating in a competition in which they were given a problem that’s been keeping them up at night.

“I was so tired I just went straight to sleep, woke up, thought about the problem, tried to just do anything to distract myself—watch TV, go on my computer—but I couldn’t,” Zvornicanin said.

Zvornicanin, 17, and Rivera, 17, are students at T.R. Proctor High School and participating as a team in the Air Force Research Laboratory’s fourth annual Challenge Competition at Griffiss Institute in Rome.

The competition takes place during the high schools’ spring breaks as a part of the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) initiative.

Participating students from 10 area schools are given a problem to solve on Monday, and present their solutions to a group of judges and then to family and friends on Friday.

Three teams are picked as winners. They will receive paid summer internships at three organizations in Griffiss Park: CACI International Inc., ITT Exelis and the Air Force Research Laboratory.

“The whole reason behind this is to make sure the students know that if they stay in school and pursue math and sciences … there’s an abundance of jobs available for them right in the Mohawk Valley,” said Helen Rico, STEM coordinator at Griffiss Institute.

Jeni Yager, 16, of Holland Patent High School, is planning to work in computer science or engineering, and said the program is helpful in deciding what area she’d like to concentrate in.

“You get to talk to a lot of cool people that can tell us more about these awesome jobs that are available to us if we keep going with math and science like we are right now,” she said.

Zvornicanin and Rivera agreed that an opportunity like this opens their eyes to real-world applications rather than the straightforward problems in school in which they are given a problem and know instantly how to solve it.

“This, it challenges you,” Rivera said. “It says, ‘alright, this is the normal way to do it. Now you’ve got to combine them and find solutions to these kinds of problems.’”

MaryAnn Bulawa, 16, of Rome Free Academy, thinks that even without the internship, the experience is great for students to determine if that field is one they really want to pursue.

“Personally, I don’t think it was really a tough decision to give up my spring break to come and do this,” she said. “I just jumped at it, I was so excited.”

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